


you drove us off the road

by ilgaksu



Series: ceasefire [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Exes, Getting Back Together, Korean Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Texan Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 11:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8055025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: In the dark, Keith can lean over him, leave Lance trapped in his shadow, his eyes always open, always liquid, always something set alight. In the dark, Lance would let him do anything.
"Let's sneak out again," Keith says, his breath a furnace against Lance's mouth.
 
  a companion piece to people like you, people like me, from Lance's point of view.





	you drove us off the road

 

The first time Hunk gets him onto vodka, Lance opens his mouth to laugh. Then the world tips sideways and suddenly -

Suddenly he's spitting up all this dumb shit. Because Lance's mother is Catholic, so how would he know when things should stay dead? He's got his eyes half-closed so he doesn't have to see Hunk's face and he's saying _this is stupid, I'd never, he didn't laugh much, I'd never, who doesn't like a challenge, tell me this is stupid, buddy -_

_It's not stupid_ , Hunk says. And then he says it again. _It’s not stupid._

When Lance throws up, he really goes for it, he really goes for broke, the burn in his throat and Hunk's hand a grounding weight on the back of his neck. He tries to tether himself to it, but the words keep slipping away from him, a muddled confession; _I've always been half, it says so in Latin, 'cause bi means two, I read it on Wikipedia, his name was Keith._

_I think he was something, I think we had something, you know?_

He doesn't remember it all the next morning, and Hunk throws a water bottle at his hungover ass like it's nothing.

"You cried all over my shirt," Hunk tells him. "Time to rehydrate already," and Lance finds he laughs because he means it.

“Do you wanna talk about it, though?” Hunk adds, because he’s Hunk, and his eyes are doing that huge sweetheart puppy thing they do.

“Hunk, my man,” Lance replies, a little sad and mostly weary, “What about it is there to talk about?”

*

In the dark, Keith can lean over him, leave Lance trapped in his shadow, his eyes always open, always liquid, always something set alight. In the dark, Lance would let him do anything.

"Let's sneak out again," Keith says, his breath a furnace against Lance's mouth.

"What's in it for me, buddy," Lance retorts, sing-songs it over the clamouring helpless yammering of his chest, over his heart rising to his throat. Keith raises his eyebrows and rolls off Lance, jumps down the ladder of their shared bunk and hits the ground with a low, hollow sound. Lance can hear the rustle of Keith shrugging on his jacket and gives himself the time to get his breathing back under control.

Back home in Havana, his mama talked about boys like Keith and called them trouble. She looked at Lance with every time she said it, with the slightest of frowns, and Lance may be his mother's son but his mother isn't here.

"You with me?" Keith whispers from by the door. He's trying to lace his boots in the half-dark, and he's screwing it up spectacularly. Lance, halfway across the room, clears the rest in three strides. Keith looks up and glares, mouth half-open around something, when Lance kneels down and fixes it for him. Lance thinks he hears an aborted noise from Keith and tries to ignore it. His stomach flips, his hands are clumsy, but Lance grew up with three younger siblings and counting. He can tie shoelaces in his goddamn sleep, bro.

There's a long slow moment after he's retied it properly, where he looks up with his hand wrapped around Keith's ankle and finds Keith looking at him with his mouth hanging fully open now, his eyes barely shining.

"Always," Lance replies, and holds his eyes, holds out his hand for Keith to take and help him up with. Keith, blinking rapidly, does.

"Like what you see?"

"It's lights out," Keith snipes back, "You could be anyone except for that big mouth."

He doesn't let go of Lance's hand.

*

A year down the line from this very moment, Lance will go home to his mother for a great - aunt's funeral. He'll look at her, red-eyed,  blocking the sunlight in her doorway. It will make an aborted halo around his silhouette. He'll say: _I didn't listen. When you called boys like him trouble. Mama, I didn't listen._

His second sister will threaten to break both of Keith's hands. His younger brothers crack fifteen-year-old knuckles and say _we'll take his legs then, one each for each of us_. His father, watching all of this from the backyard silently, will go get Lance a glass from the cabinet. He'll fill it with the strongest thing in the house and give it to Lance.

"Welcome to being a man," he'll say, and go back to the yard again.

"My friend at the surgery has a brother,"  his oldest sister will offer. "I think he has a sister, too. I can ask?"

His head will ache, and his mother will kiss the top of his head, though she has to reach and he has to lean down to let her.

"Go sleep it off, sweetheart," she will say, and Lance won't know if she's talking about the drink or the overnight flight or about the entire last year of Keith's laugh. Already, surrounded by the smell of dust and sun on stone, it will seem like a bad dream.

Lance sleeps for sixteen hours. He wears a black suit to the funeral and grins when his cousins ask him when he'll bring home a wife from Arizona and then sleeps for another ten.

The flight back to America is quiet. There is no one waiting for him in Arrivals.

*

Lance manages to drag Keith out to one of the major Garrison parties when they have weekend leave. Those of them that couldn't afford a trip to Phoenix (Lance) or couldn't be bothered (Keith) are all crammed into a sticky dive off the desert highway, and Keith is dancing on the bar top. Lance sincerely hopes someone's filming this herald of the apocalypse, because he can't, he's busy, Keith is _smiling._

Lance gapes at Keith's half-lidded eyes and the sweat beading along his clavicle for a whole hot minute before he gets his own act together. If you can't beat them, join them. Keith sees him levering himself up onto the counter -wincing at the feel of spilled beer, spilled tequila, old sweat - and hauls him the rest of the way up, ignoring the stickiness of Lance's palms cementing to his gloves.

"Lance! You're here!" Keith crows, dragging Lance forward so suddenly a guy could have nearly lost his footing.

I mean, if that guy wasn't Lance. He's fine. He's fucking aces. Keith loops his arms around the back of Lance's neck. Lance puts his hands on Keith’s hips. Grounding technique, only it’s not keeping him tethered at all.

“I think I may be dead or going mad,” Lance says, and Keith presses their foreheads together and laughs right in his face. Pulls away before he kisses him.

They get to dance for a whole song, Keith with something loosened in him and Lance trying not to let go, right up until Lance faintly hears someone from the crowd shout "Get it, Sanchez!" and someone else go, "Holy shit is that -"

“Aaaand that's our cue to go, babe," Lance decides and carefully maneuvers them both off the bar, draping Keith's arm around his shoulder and heading out the door. "Come on, time to sober up.”

Keith pulls an unwilling face, but lets himself get dragged into the diner across the road. Lance sits and checks shit on his phone in between sneaking glances at Keith drinking his way through black filter coffee opposite him. He'd told the waitress to just leave the carafe. He’s drinking directly from it. It hurts something in Lance’s soul to watch.

"Babe, no," Lance tries for the second time to take the carafe away from Keith, who levels an impressive glare and yanks it back.

The waitress lets out a giggle. Lance looks up at her and she puts her notepad to her mouth, smiling still. Her nails are acrylic and very purple.

"Sorry," she says, "You're both just really cute. You remind me of my girlfriend."

She says the last part with a cautious eye on the door. The place is empty, so she must be looking out for her boss. It's so familiar something in Lance's stomach drops.

"I'm not your girlfriend," Keith says suddenly to Lance.

He releases the carafe on the third try. Lance takes a deep drag and then winces. Filter coffee is like the graveyard where good coffee crawled to die. Keith watches him with his chin resting in his hands, smirking. Lance flips him off and takes another swig out of spite. It's still as lukewarm and somehow twice as nasty. The night makes Lance's mouth feel gritty. Opposite, you can practically see the caffeine unfurling in Keith's eyes.

"I'm not your girlfriend," Keith repeats, much quieter. He looks very awake.

“I know.”

These are the things they both know: Lance's eyes follow girls walking down the hallway and Keith has never once looked up. It's been three months of this and Lance knows what he is and Keith knows what he is and neither have any idea who they will one day be.

In short, they know enough to stop.

Lance drops a ten out of his wallet onto the table and grabs Keith's wrist. He smiles at the waitress, who smiles back, a quick little slip of solidarity.

"Keep the change," he says, "Come on, lover boy. You're going to miss sunrise."

*

"Can I take your order please," Lance hears, and very clearly thinks _oh, fuck no_ before looking up.

He knows that voice from a year of _Lance, why are you like this_ and _Lance, if you get us caught -_ and _Lance, shut your mouth and don't stop._ Keith is wearing an apron, a red shirt and a truly unfortunate bandana. It's also truly unfortunate in that it doesn't make him look less attractive.

Lance thinks Fate, if it exists, is a right bitch.

"Do you have any iced tea," he asks, noticing how Keith scans the whole group and relaxes when he doesn't recognise any of them. Then Lance swears internally when he remembers how he got to drinking iced tea in the first place, watching the tremble of Keith's throat swallowing and snatching the bottle off him to make it stop.

If Keith remembers, he doesn't show it.

"Sure do," he says, and when he jots it down Lance notices Keith isn't wearing his gloves. Hunk, sat next to him with Lance's arm around his shoulder, is the only one who's clocked how weird Lance has gotten. Lance ignores Hunk elbowing him and says something. He doesn't know what. Keith writes it down.

Lance has fantasised about seeing Keith again for four straight months. Unfortunately for Keith and his ugly bandana, Lance has licked his wounds long enough to get all the blood out. Now, he doesn't feel like he's dying from it. Now, it just stings. Now, it just makes him mean.

He watches Keith's retreating back with the sense of history repeating itself.

*

"What's your deal with Keith?"

Pidge swings their legs from where they're sat on the table and gives Lance a pointed look when he replies, "I don't have a deal with Keith."

"You've got something on your neck," Pidge deadpans, and Lance feels himself flush. He doesn't have to look to know the lovebite is dark and high on his throat; Keith always did know his soft places, where to sink his teeth.

He doesn't try and cover it with his hand, but it's a close call.

"Don't tell me," they continue, adjusting their glasses whilst Lance pushes off from the counter and heads towards the sofa. He can hear them following him. Christ, he wishes they hadn’t seen. He wishes Keith hadn’t kissed him. He wishes Keith had kissed him some more.

Lance feels starving. He rattles the cupboards searching for food. Pidge is still talking.

"- so, in summary: Keith tripped, there was a disturbance in the Force, and he landed _on your mouth_."

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

Even as he says it, he feels lousy, with his mean streak a mile wide and Pidge -  

"You're right. I should go hang out in all the places that aren't in the Galra Empire - oh, _wait._ "

"Seriously, Pidge," Lance definitely does not beg, falling backwards onto the sofa and covering his eyes with one arm. Behind his eyelids all he can see is his hands on Keith, Keith saying "No," with a last dying gasp of something old and achingly familiar in his eyes. _See, you're a great pilot_. He pulls his arm away again.

"Can you drop it?" he asks them, and makes it clear he means it.

"Lance," they say. They sound surprised. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

He turns his head to the side and doesn't look at them, but he hears them shift. He closes his eyes again.

"Hunk said you got dumped," Pidge says slowly. "Back at the Garrison."

"Hunk should know snitches get stitches," Lance mutters, but doesn't move.

He feels when they get it. They half-ricochet off the damn couch arm before throwing themself back down, artificial gravity and their own half-horrified gasp.

"Oh my fucking God."

"Don't fucking swear," Lance says half-heartedly.

"You and Keith, though? That's like -"

"Low budget Brokeback?"

Pidge snorts, and says, "Doesn't one of them die at the end?"

"Hey," Lance says, "Don't give up hope, Pidgenator. There's still time."

Pidge sighs, and they sound almost disappointed. Lance breathes in and breathes out and keeps his eyes closed and thinks _you can't let him back in your head again. He'll only go around breaking shit._

"Are you actually going to talk about this or are you gonna keep doing that thing you're doing?"

"I'm laugh a fucking minute over here," Lance retorts, "If it ain't broke, why fix it."

_I just need to sleep it off._

He waits until they've walked away to finally open his eyes.

*

"You're going to be a good pilot."

Lance thinks he says _don't do this._ He doesn't say _you bastard, don't do this to me._ He doesn't say _don't do this to us._ He doesn't say _you take up all this space in my head. Stay and pay the fucking rent, drop-out._

He watches Keith walk instead.

*

After all, it's like Keith said once. He wasn't Lance's girlfriend.

*

Lance steals Keith's food and gets into Keith's bed and he doesn't give it back and he doesn't get out.

"Are we gonna tell people," Lance asks, his mouth moving against Keith's shoulder is the dead of night, lips catching against the fabric.

"One of us will get moved out," Keith replies, yawning. "Did you even read the policy handbook?"

"Like hell I did, who wants to read that, that's what I'm keeping you for - wait, what?"

Keith huffs, annoyed, his hand tracing absent patterns in the small of Lance's back. When Lance bothers to concentrate, he can figure out numbers: star-names, the freezing level of nitrogen, the Fibonnaci sequence. Romantic shit like that.

"Neither of us turned twenty one yet, dumbass. That's the Garrison’s age of majority. Item 3a, Article 17."

Keith manages to sound _bored._

"That's bullshit! You're bullshitting me!"

Lance leans up on one arm and glares at Keith, who rolls his eyes.

"Way to shoot the messenger much," he mutters.

"Whatever." When Keith tugs at Lance's arm, he curls back in against him. "So what, you want to be my dirty little secret?" Lance cackles at the thought.

Keith kicks him out of the bed.

"You took too much room up anyway," Keith tells him and turns away.

"Don't be like that, sweetheart!" Lance says, climbing back in next to Keith. He's right; it's too small. Lance ignores this in favour of kissing the nape of Keith's neck, slow and soft. Keith shivers but otherwise ignores him.

Lance stops and leans his head between Keith's shoulder blades. He asks, "Does that mean I can't tell my family about you? 'Cause, I mean. I kind of already did."

"You did what?"

"I told Aleesha so, like, trust me, they all know by now. They _all_ know. Uh, sorry?" Lance thinks to add, because Keith has gone very still and he figures he's fucked up somehow. This whole thing is new to him. Keith’s really gotta cut him some more slack.

"No," Keith says. "No, it's okay." He sounds like he's describing the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

"It's totally not okay, is it?"

"I already said it was, Lance."

"Okay, but are you just saying that because you don't want to fight or are you saying that because -"

"I'm saying it because I didn't expect you to and it's weird, alright? And also it’s, like, 1am, and I don't exactly have a family to tell about you, and nobody's ever done that before. So it's weird. It's not bad, just weird. Shut up and go to sleep, Lance, don't say whatever you're thinking right now -"

"Hey," Lance says. He’s sure Keith can feel the curve of his lips smiling against his skin.

"I will shove you off the bed again, Lance," Keith threatens. "Don't think I won't, we're not talking right now we are _sleeping_ -"

"Come home with me next leave," Lance says, and Keith makes a strangled noise. "Come home and meet them."

And honestly? He hadn't realised that's what he was going to say but now he has he's entirely sold on the idea. He likes imagining Keith there, squinting in the sunlight, his hair sticking to the back of his neck, complaining in the family kitchen about the heat. Keith, sprawled insolently on his childhood bed. Keith, shaking his father’s hand and talking about motorbikes. Keith, meeting his mother.

"Please," Lance says, "I think they'd like you."

"I won't be good enough."

Keith’s voice is so small and so hidden in the crook of his own wrist that Lance almost misses it. His chest caves in a little.  

"So what," Lance says, "I could bring home one of the saints and my aunt would be saying shit. I chose you. So what."

"....Go to sleep, Lance."

Keith's voice is muffled. Lance smiles, his teeth light against the first ridge of Keith's spine, something in him expanding. _What's got you looking so happy, little brother?_

"That's not a no."

"Go the fuck to sleep, Lance, or so help me."

"We can tell them when we're twenty one," Lance says, eighteen years old and half - asleep in his first boyfriend's bed, "See them try an' stop us then."

He's out cold before he hears Keith's reply. Maybe that's better. Conversations that late tend to become more than they're meant to.

*

Lance sleeps for sixteen hours then goes to the funeral like he's supposed to and everyone says he's getting too thin. They ask if he has a girlfriend and he says no, he doesn't. Keith was right about that. He sleeps for ten more hours, asleep in his suit, and Aleesha wakes him up and drags him out to the empty backyard at seven in the morning.

"It's seven in the morning," Lance complains, following her out, "I feel like shit."

"You look it."

"Wow, thanks."

She hands him a beer bottle, the condensation icing his hand. The day is going to be boiling, you can smell it. She takes the cap off hers with her teeth and drinks in silence.

"Where's he living," Aleesha asks eventually, "Cara has air miles."

"Get in line," Lance replies bitterly. The worst of the hurt is slowing down, grinding to a steady loss, stable as a sleeping pulse. He's starting to get angry. He's starting to stay angry. He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. Aleesha kisses his cheek and cradles her beer in her hands and Lance looks at the skyline rising out of the backyard and he tells himself: _that works. Stay angry. Stay angry. Stay -_

*

"Stay in formation," Shiro snaps. "We're trying again."

And see, Lance thinks Shiro's great and all, but they've been running drills for three hours, and they're no closer to Voltron then they were this morning. He smacks his forehead against the main console and groans out loud.

"Something to share with the class, Lance?" Keith snipes down the comms.

"I don't know," Lance shoots back. "Thoughts? Questions? Concerns? Where's my union-mandated break hour?"

"A break would be really nice, actually," Hunk adds mildly. "My blood sugar’s gotta be getting low or something."

"Thanks for backing me up there, my guy. Listen, come on, his blood sugar’s getting low! This is space capitalism!"

"Yeah, 'cause socialism always works out."

"Don't lecture me on the failure of governments, Keith, I'm Cuban."

"I'm _Korean_."

"Will you two _shut up_ ," Pidge hisses.

"Fine," Shiro says, voice clipped in that way Shiro does when he's pissed and trying to hide it, "Half an hour. Earth time."

"Power of the people," Lance cheers, and sits back up so quick the chair rocks back a little. Blue isn’t too sold on him leaving, a soft insistence in the back of his head, but he blows her a kiss after heading back towards the Castle. He’s his own man, and he’s also coming back in literally thirty minutes. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

"Great landing, babe! Let's do it again sometime!"

"Are you seriously _flirting_ with your _Lion_ ," Keith mutters.

"What," Lance says, faux-innocently, "You jealous?"

Keith looks at him with an ugly, taut expression. Holy _shit._

"I'm not jealous," he insists through gritted teeth. Keith is transparent and persists in the mythos that he's inscrutable. It's hilarious. It’d actually be cute, if Keith wasn’t Keith and hadn’t kicked Lance’s heart to the curb like week-old roadkill.

"Guys, give it a rest," Hunk complains, stretching out flat on his back and tipping a canteen of ion-water into his mouth. "Haven't you heard of a ceasefire?"

"Haven't you heard of the Cold War?" Lance says, not breaking eye contact with Keith, smirking. "He's Russia."

"What? No way. I'm American."

"Brrrrr, no, can't hear you over the icy tundra of your entire being. Definitely Russia."

Keith throws his hands up and walks away to talk to Shiro. After they get back into the air, Lance  spends the next hour going, "Sorry, I'm not following - anyone speak Russian?" every time Keith tries to signal him on the comms.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS," Keith shouts finally.

"This is the weirdest foreplay I've ever seen," Pidge says, half to themself and half to Hunk.

"Right?"

Keith and Lance both ignore them. There’s a twinge in Lance’s chest. He ignores that too.

*

At the Garrison, Keith beats Lance out in the rankings in every last thing except marksmanship, so Lance is never going to let Keith live it down, not ever, not in a million years. He's going to gloat on his deathbed; his last words are gonna be _hey Keith, how does it feel to be eating my dust, huh?_

They've known each other a month and a month only. Lance hasn't figured shit out yet. All he knows is he's a stranger in a strange land, and riling up his roommate is the only thing that feels familiar.

"Who even taught you to shoot," Keith asks, frowning as Lance loads up a pistol in front of a group of other newbies with a flourish. It's all about showmanship; the best magic is just sleight of hand; Lance winks and says, "I guess I'm just a natural, pumpkin," and Keith flushes and mutters something suspiciously like "Dickhead," and stomps off.

Lance sticks his tongue out at Keith's retreating back, and then hears the attending officer sound off with "Sanchez! If you've time to be aggravating your fellow recruits, you're not working hard enough! Clean the gun rack after class. All of it."

His spine snaps to attention on automatic, even as his mouth doesn’t get the memo. Habits of a lifetime, you know?

"Aw, man, you've got to be fuc --- yes, ma'am."

See, he got there eventually. Lance throws in a salute for good measure.

"Don't be smiling at me, Sanchez. I'm not your mother, I don't fall for that shit."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Get a single shot out of line, you'll be doing push ups all your break - and your roommate can join you, if he thinks it's so fuckin' hilarious."

Behind Lance, there is a suspicious and deadly silence.

"Yes, ma'am," Keith finally says. The traitor.

"A single shot, boys. I don't have time for best out of three here."

She points to the range, and given that Lance apparently know lives to obey and all that shit, he goes. Lance waits for Keith to arm his pistol in silence. The entire class has dropped their shit to come watch; the officer is letting them. He hopes this making-a-lesson-out-of-Lance thing isn’t going to stick. That would fucking suck. Lance would smile at the girls, but he's busy trying to beat Keith right now, and that should tell him something, but Lance has always been a practical learner.

"Don't take your safety off 'till you mean it," Lance tells him, pleasantly smiling, "This isn't amateur hour, second in line."

Keith hisses out a single breath through his teeth, readjusts his earmuffs, says nothing.

Lance smirks. This is gonna be great.

*

By the time Lance hits push up number fifty and counting, he's feeling -- well, regret is for other people, but Lance is feeling something, that's for sure.

"This," Lance tells Keith bitterly, "is all your fault."

"You were looking at me!" Keith complains, switching from one arm to the other without breaking stride. Lance _loathes_ him. "You threw me off!"

"What are you gonna do when people are _shooting at you_ ," Lance says, "It's not my fault there was fuck all that shot back in Texas!"

"You’re kidding me, right? Have you ever _been_ to Texas?"

"Stop flirting, ladies!" the officer snaps. A group of nearby cadets giggle. Yeah, this is getting old fast.

"Yes, ma'am," Lance says, then mutters, "Did she get the memo that they, like, stopped the whole Don't Ask Don't Tell bullshit back in the Noughties?"

“Have you literally _ever_ been to Texas _ever_ ,” Keith is still saying. “Like, ever in your _actual life._ I really don’t think you have.”

" _Sixty-nine, seventy_ -” Lance counts, ignoring him. “Hey, Keith, did you get to sixty-nine yet?"

"I'm going to smother you," Keith says, "I've heard it's a _really painful_ way to die."

"Don't be bitter, Keith. Virginity is nothing to be ashamed of. Just remember to stay safe. Don't - _seventy-five_ \- put up if you can't shut up."

"Guess that throws you out of the running - _ninety-nine_ -"

He throws Lance a single, smug look.

"Oh my god," Lance realises, "You're showing off, aren't you. You're trying to make me look bad. You utter bastard."

"It's not that hard."

"That's what she said."

"Are you still talking? Why are you still talking?"

*

Lance used to have nightmares about this exact scenario. He spies the flashing lights before Coran does. He feels it in his bones. There are some things you cannot unknow. There are some decisions you cannot unmake. There are some choices you laugh through the class on and pray you'll never have to pick, because you won't know what you'd do until you see the lights in your eyes for yourself.

It turns out Lance makes the choice he always secretly hoped he'd be able to. He's almost proud, a lot scared. His mama is going to cry. At least Keith isn't in the castle. What will the Garrison tell Aleesha? Will she settle for what they say? Do they already think he's dead?

Lance Sanchez. Pilot error. Following in the footsteps of your hero, it turns out, really sucks.

He pushes Coran out of the way anyway.

*

It's kinda like the first time he kissed Keith. His hands were shaking, but the rest of him felt very still. Quiet as the desert surrounding them, skin feeling thin as the ozone. 

_This is what I am doing. I have done, I am doing, I will do._

Lance has always fallen down on the grammar side of things. He's a practical learner. 

*

Lance isn't sure if he's dying. He's watching Pidge skate on the ice of the sea, snow falling on Varadero beach. They're laughing, blood trickling from the corners of their mouth, and Lance can taste sulphur, copper, the colour blue. He feels like something is wrong.

"Am I dying?" he asks Shiro, who is sat with eyes closed on the sand. When he opens them, they're opaque and yellow, and suddenly it's Keith looking up at him, Keith in his Garrison uniform. It feels both familiar and nostalgic.

"Wouldn't it be nice to be the first at something for once?" Keith replies, which both is and isn't an answer.

Lance tries to tell Keith this, but Keith blinks long, slow lashes over bright golden eyes and says, "You know I don't speak Russian, Lance."

When Lance looks up at the sea, Shiro is spinning Pidge around on the ice, faster and faster, snow spraying around their ankles.

"Where's Hunk?" Lance asks, and then Hunk is right there.

"Hey, buddy," Lance says, but Hunk just looks at him and frowns, tilting his head with those eyes. “Come on, don’t look at me like that, Hunk. You’re killing me, buddy.”

"I think he can probably hear us," Hunk says, and the snow keeps falling in Varadero. "They tell you to keep talking and stuff, don't they?"

Pidge laughs, low and sweet and loud. Lance thinks they sound very young.

"Fuck this," Keith says, snow in his hair. His eyes flash. His teeth are chattering, even though Lance can feel the heat of summer at the back of his neck, the promise of sunburn.

"It's not ideal," Allura says, even though Lance can't see her anywhere. There's the faint sound of someone crying, and Pidge’s laughter, he realises, sounds like the desert cicadas.

"I don't think this is real," Lance says to Keith. Keith smiles and shakes his head.

"You know I don't speak Spanish either, Lance," he says, and leans forward to kiss him, his hands shockingly cold on each side of Lance's face.

*

Lance doesn't die. He says he doesn't remember Keith's hand cradling the back of his neck, the dust in his eyes, Keith saying _don't you die on me, Lance, don't you fucking walk on me_ like something is being torn out of him.

He definitely doesn't remember saying _I’m trying, I’m trying, that's my line, sweetheart_ and watching Shiro’s eyes widen like the moon he nearly died on.

He'd wanted to spit those words back into Keith's face for nearly six months now. So call him bitter, call him an asshole,  squandering his last words like a dead man's inheritance. The taste of blood in his mouth was bad and Keith's eyes were scared and Lance doesn't, doesn't remember thinking _no, wait, I -_

*

"Oh my god," Keith says, "Do you even hear yourself half the time?"

“Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of you avoiding the question," Lance says. He walks around Keith and falls back onto his own bed, leans back on his palms and watches Keith take the place in. He gives Keith a good thirty seconds of internal wrestling about where to sit before saying, "Sit on the bed already, Keith, unless you don't trust yourself near my irresistible body -"

Keith throws himself bodily onto the bed, so hard it bounces.

"Cool, go ahead, break the bed then. Have fun figuring out to explain that one to Shiro."

Very pointedly, Keith makes eye contact and sits on his hands.

"Nice alibi."

"You know," Keith muses, "Really didn't miss you laughing shit off like it's nothing."

"Yeah, well," Lance says, "I didn't miss watching you losing your shit and then telling me it's fine. Looks like we're at a stalemate. Sucks to be you."

"Sucks to be us," Keith corrects. Fuck. That's -

"Yeah," Lance says, and picks at the hem of his best and only jeans.

"You weren't nothing," Keith says after a short and uncomfortable silence. "You can't just laugh it off, okay? You weren't nothing."

His words are bloodlessly precise, pinpointed right where Lance lives, finding the weak stitches in Lance and ripping them out in one.

"You gotta roll with the punches, my dude," Lance mutters, "What can I say."

There's another silence. When Lance glances over, Keith is biting his lip and fiddling with the Velcro on his gloves.

"You don't," Keith says, and then, very low and fierce, "You don't get it. You were going to be fine. You were - there was - you were going to be _fine_."

"You broke my heart," Lance tells him. It's the first time he's said it out loud. "My mama _hates_ you."

"You scared the shit out of me," Keith replies.

"I'm not a goddamn typhoon siren, Keith. You don't just run in the opposite direction!"

"You don't get it," Keith grits out, and Lance looks at him and says, "Then make me."

Keith looks about ready to throw himself out of the airlock. Lance is nineteen years old and he's looking at the first boy he ever loved, the first boy he ever loved and it felt like a star's birth only in reverse, all that light in the sky that should be loud but in the absence of air is silent. Keith sits there, all the fire in him gone out, and says, "I know you said - look, okay? Nobody ever picked me."

"I did," Lance replies and Keith shrugs half-heartedly.

"You said _make me_ , Lance. I’m trying - just shut up."

"Okay."

"Can you, like, not be looking at me? It's throwing me off."

"Are you serious?" Lance looks at Keith's expression. "You're serious. I mean." He turns to face the wall. "Don't stab me in the back, okay?"

"Smothering," Keith says immediately. "It's a really painful way to die."

It’s almost like old times.

Keith takes a deep breath, and then another. He starts talking. Lance stays looking at the wall; he tries turning around once, and then halts and thinks better of it. He tucks his knees up against his chest, rests his chin on the top of his knees, and listens.

*

"Don't travel light, do you?" the boy says, eyeing Lance's suitcase.  The kid looks like he's been raised by wolves. Lance is sure saw him shove a honest-to-God knife under his pillow when he heard the door lock activate. And honestly, Lance didn't know accents like that existed out of the movies. He resists making a _we're not in Kansas anymore_ joke, watches the boy watch his every move, watches the boy roll his shoulders before grabbing a packet of cigarettes out of a duffel bag and heading out.

Huh, he thinks, watching Keith weave his way down the corridor. Huh. That's going to be a thing, then. Aleesha did once say he had weird taste, but he reassures himself that his taste in girls is still stellar by checking them out from his doorway for the next twenty minutes.

"Girls, am I right?" he says when Keith returns seconds before lights out, still congratulating himself on a near miss.

"I'm gay," Keith says, sounding very bored.

"That's cool," Lance squeaks. Keith throws him a look and mutters something under his breath on his way into the shower. Oh, holy shit.

_I think my roommate is a gay cowboy,_ he texts Aleesha, half an eye on the closed bathroom door.

He gets an ultimately useless string of laughing emoji in reply.

_Cool story bro_

_Don't do anything stupid k_

_when have I ever?_

He falls asleep waiting for her to text back, the sound of the shower running a shivering thread through his dreams.

*

"You're heavy," Lance says, "Your hair is in my face."

"Wow, thanks," Keith snorts, and goes to move out of Lance's arms. Lance tightens them and tucks Keith's head more securely beneath his chin; their legs are too tangled for Keith to make it free without some serious wrangling.

"Who said you could move?"

"You don't own me," Keith reminds him, but settles back in against Lance's chest. Lance tucks some stray hair behind Keith's ear. Keith smells like shampoo and he absently turns his face into Lance's touch and it hits Lance right there and then: like every bass drop, every last stinging shot of tequila, every last song Lance has ever loved coming on in a club, all of them at once. It guts him.

"Hey," Lance says and Keith smiles against his hand and rolls his eyes.

"You run your mouth when you get nervous."

"What? No!"

"Yes," Keith says, openly grinning now. One of his front teeth is a little crooked. Lance's heart snags around it.

"You like my mouth, jackass," Lance says, not at all defensively except for how it is. Keith's eyes are laughing at him.

"You're alright, I guess."

"Alright?"

"We're in the middle of a desert. Best of a bad bunch."

"There are _three thousand cadets here,_ " Lance points out, affronted.

Keith shrugs, now shivering with laughter.

"Get out of this bed right now."

"It's my bed!"

"That's my shirt!"

Keith raises his eyebrows.

"You wanna do this?"

"You stole my toothbrush yesterday!" Lance adds because yeah, he's doing this alright.

"What," Keith says, twisting slightly in his arms, "are you having a gay crisis? Shouldn't that have happened, like -"

Lance claps a hand over Keith's mouth.

"Don't say it out loud," he hisses, "Oh my go -- did you _just lick my hand_ ? Dude, _gross._ "

He pulls his hand away, horrified.

" - when we were literally naked," Keith finishes.

"And you said it out loud anyway," Lance says, "Somewhere right now, my abuelita is crying and she doesn't know why."

"You do that too," Keith murmurs, "Laugh shit off. Like it's not anything."

His gaze is very intent and dark. Lance pulls him back in so Keith can't look at him anymore.

"This is something," he says, very quietly into Keith's hair. "Right?"

Keith goes very still, then nods.

Lance closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of shampoo. He opens his mouth. He kind of wants to set himself on fire.

"I," he says. "I."

He stops. He swallows.

"Shhh," Keith says. When he blinks, his eyelashes brush against the skin of Lance's throat. "Don't ruin the moment."

Lance swallows.

"Okay," he says. His chest feels so loud. He stares at the wall. Keith is all angles and sharp points, a feat of mathematics, and Lance holds on.

_It's like falling,_ his sister had told him once, measuring her words slow and piecemeal. _You're screaming your head off, but you'd kill anyone who tried to reel you back in._

"Yeah," Lance says, helplessly, pointlessly, his eyes on the wall. "Yeah, okay."

Keith takes his hand.

"You with me?" he says. Something in Lance is losing altitude. Something in Lance is gaining momentum.

"Always," he says, "Now let's go save the world, cadet."

Keith laughs.


End file.
